This is me during the summer of 2006, climbing "over the top" on the Joseph Conrad in Mystic, CT.

At the Bottom of Shakespeare’s Ocean

This book explores how Shakespeare's plays understand the oceans as simultaneously historical realities and symbolic forces. It's part of the Shakespeare Now! series, published by Continuum Press in London. It's available now worldwide.

Publisher's web page

Amazon page

The New Thalassology

A term coined by Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell (from the Greek thalassos, the sea), this phrase describes the efforts of historians, literary scholars, ecologists, and other writers and thinkers to “historicize the oceans” and reconceive the relationship between human culture and the largest natural object on our planet.

Blue Cultural Studies

My own term for the maritime humanities, "blue cultural studies," suggests that renewed attention to the oceans can change how we understand literature and other products of human culture.

Works-in-Progress in Blue Cultural Studies:

"Lost at Sea: The Ocean in the English Imagination, 1550-1750"

I'll be guest-curating an exhibition of rare books and early maritime materials at the Folger Shakespeare Library. The exhibition will open on June 10, 2010, with an opening gala on Monday June 14.

“Shipwreck and the Meanings of Ocean, 1552-1719”

This book examines representations of maritime disaster, from Hakluyt’s Principal Navigations of the English Nation (1589) through Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719), in terms of changing ideas about the relationship between humanity and nature in the early modern period.

Some Related Web Links

Williams – Mystic 

An undergraduate program in maritime studies, created jointly by Williams College and Mystic Seaport.    

Mystic Seaport  

The main site for Mystic’s open-air museum and library.
Photo: Charles W. Morgan at Mystic Seaport

The John Carter Brown Library 

One of the premier maritme collections in the United States.  I was a Fellow here during the 2008-2009 academic year.

The National Maritime Museum in Greenwich  

The largest maritime museum in the world, filled with many wonderful things, from Lord Nelson's bloody socks to Edward Barlow's manuscript account of his years at sea in the seventeenth century.  I was a Fellow at the Caird Library here during 2007-2008.

Oceans Connect  

A Ford Foundation-funded initiative at Duke University.

Steve Mentz